Mops have long been used as effective tools for a variety of cleaning applications. Their use for cleaning floor surfaces and for mopping and absorbing liquid from surfaces is well known. One such common mop consists of a cleaning head with a plurality of strands made of cotton, cloth, sponge-plastic, or other fluid absorbent material. An elongated handle is normally attached to one end of the cleaning head.
Mops of this type work very well when their cleaning head strands are dry. However, the mop becomes ineffective when the strands become saturated with fluid. To remedy this problem, various mops with wringer devices have evolved with features which cause the strands to be wrung out, compressed, and squeezed of fluid. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,675,857 employs the use of a sleeve to wring out moisture from a mop's cleaning head. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,724,694 and 4,809,387, disclose sleeves in combination with rollers. U.S. Pat. No. 2,820,232 simply shows the use of rollers to squeeze wet mop strand elements. These prior devices, however, have a number of disadvantages. For instance, the wringers used on these mops have either cumbersome sleeve arrangements or are highly mechanized devices. Significantly they are inefficient for the purposes for which they were designed. Many of the devices do not provide sufficient uniform pressure to the mop head strands to wring a substantial amount of the moisture from the mop head.
U. S. Pat. Nos. 3,089,171, and 4,164,800 employ a solid annular ring attached to a support rod to apply pressure completely around the mop head. But since the ring is rigid, it also does not apply enough compressive force to fully wring dry the strands of the head. Further, the internal surfaces of the ring offer substantial resistence as the ring travels down the strands of the mop head. This makes it more difficult to move the ring all the way to the end of the mop head. In addition, the flapper on the bottom of the ring, designed to allow repositioning of the ring over the mop handle when it is pulled toward the user, is inefficient and prone to dysfunction and breakage, upon extended use.
Co-pending U.S. application Ser. No. 09/085,605, U.S. Pat. No. 5,894,625, solves the shortcomings of the prior art; however, no prior roller wringer mop addresses the problem of ensuring that the actual roller wringer, after it has wrung the mop strands and is withdrawn toward the user for storage, is automatically repositioned on the handle to allow unencumbered mopping. Prior mop roller wringers are not reliable in repositioning the wringers without manual intervention by the user. The locking system contemplated herein is an improvement over prior mop roller wringers, including co-pending application Ser. No. 09/085,605, on which it is anticipated this system can be used.